Thursday, January 28, 2016

Germany’s Transparency International (TI) released its
newest corruption
index for 2015, and as usual Iraq was at the bottom of the list. TI scores
countries from 0 to 100 with 100 being at the top. The ten worst countries in
its new study were Somalia, North Korea, Afghanistan, Sudan, South Sudan,
Angola, Libya, Iraq, Venezuela, and Guinea-Bissau. Seven of those nations had
the worst ranks last
year. Iraq received the same score that it had for the last two years at
16. In 2012 it did slightly better at 18.

Most Corrupt
Countries On Transparency International Corruption Index 2015

1. Somalia

1. North Korea

3. Afghanistan

4. Sudan

5. South Sudan

6. Angola

7. Libya

7. Iraq

9. Venezuela

10. Guinea-Bissau

Iraq always ranks towards the bottom of these surveys
because corruption is so rampant throughout the state. The ruling elite use
graft and bribes to maintain their patronage systems and enrich themselves.
That’s also the reason why there is no real push to end it either because if one
top officials were to be taken down it would threaten all the rest. That’s
despite repeated promises by the prime ministers, the complaints of Ayatollah
Ali al-Sistani and protests that occur almost every year demanding action on
the issue. Premier Haidar Abadi for example announced a reform program in August
2015 that was supposed to address corruption, but he was focused more on
building up his own base and going after his rivals than actually addressing
the problem, and nothing substantive was done. Abadi passed up a perfect
opportunity as the street was with him and so was Najaf, but he was unwilling
to seriously touch the golden goose that keeps the Iraqi parties going.

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

In December 2015 Iraq’s former Finance Minister Rafi Issawi
was convicted in two separate court cases. Issawi last ran afoul of the law in
2012 when his bodyguards were arrested and Issawi was charged with terrorism.
That led to months of protests across a number of provinces that became one of
the major stories in the country for 2013. When Issawi was finally found guilty
in 2015 however it was not for involvement with violence, but for rather
routine corruption.

At the end of 2015 Issawi was found guilty in two separate
corruption trials. First, Issawi was given seven years
for manipulating money exchanges. A few days later Issawi received
an additional one year sentence in a misdemeanor court for appointing relatives
to office and issuing illegal degrees, so people could get government jobs.
There were originally 20 other
charges against him, but those were dropped. One and seven years were
relatively light sentences showing that the charges were not that serious. Like
other top officials, Issawi was treated with kid gloves by the courts, and was
only convicted after he had left office and was out of the country as the
government is not serious about tackling graft and other illegalities. This was
anti-climatic compared to what Issawi went through in previous years.

The last time Issawi was faced with charges it was for
terrorism, and caused a huge controversy that lasted for nearly a year. On December
20, 2012, ten of Issawi’s bodyguards were arrested. A State of Law member claimed
that twenty families in Anbar filed suits against them, which led to warrants
being issued. (1) On December 29,
one of the guards was shown on Al-Iraqiya TV confessing to taking orders from
Issawi’s son-in-law to carry out assassinations with aid from former Vice
President Tariq al-Hashemi. The arrests led to a series of protests
in Salahaddin, Anbar, Ninewa, Diyala, Kirkuk, Babil, Baghdad, and even in the
south in Maysan, Dhi Qar, and Basra initially. In January, Moqtada al-Sadr sent
a delegation
to the protests in Ramadi to express support, and his bloc rejected
an offer by Prime Minister Maliki to assume Issawi’s position as Finance
Minister. Later, these protests took on a sectarian tone as Sunni
demonstrations against Maliki’s Shiite government with a few turning very
militant such as in Fallujah and Hawija, with the latter taken over by the
Naqshibandi insurgent group and the former featuring some Islamic State
supporters. When they started however they were about the prime minister
targeting another one of his opponents, and cut across sectarian and political
lines. They came after Maliki had chased off Vice President Hashemi into exile
the year before on similar terrorist charges, and the premier was pushing the
Kurds over oil and the disputed territories. Issawi was actually aligned with
Maliki beforehand, but then broke with him. Issawi wrote
an opinion piece with Iyad Allawi asking for the U.S to intervene to stop
Maliki from grabbing more power, and called
for a no confidence vote against the premier, which led to the arrest warrants
being issued.

Maliki used the same tactics of intimidation against Issawi
in the past. In December 2011 one of Hashemi’s bodyguards claimed that the vice
president and Issawi ran death squads in Fallujah in 2006. It was later reported
that the bodyguard was tortured to acquire the confession. Maliki had accused
Issawi of involvement with violence the year before as well. In 2010
General Ray Odierno sent a letter to Maliki telling him that U.S. intelligence
had reviewed Issawi’s case and found nothing against him. In 2005-2006 Fallujah
was an insurgent center and Issawi ran a hospital there leading to suspicions
that he must have either cooperated with or been with the militants. Maliki
constantly played upon that background even though the Americans did not
believe there was anything to it.

If the Iraqi government was so committed to taking Issawi to
court for terrorism charges in 2012 and threatened to do so in 2011, what
changed in 2015? The case against Issawi was always a political move by Prime
Minister Maliki. Charging his rivals with involvement with violence would not
only force them out of office, but discredit them with the public as well. With
Maliki no longer premier however, there was no pressure on the courts to follow
through with such a case anymore. Instead, Issawi was found guilty of
corruption charges that any Iraqi minister could have been charged with. Still,
Maliki ultimately won because Issawi’s political career is probably over for
the foreseeable future.

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

At the end of 2015 the Islamic State launched an offensive
against the Kurds in Ninewa and Kirkuk. That was followed by some headline
grabbing terrorist attacks in Baghdad and Diyala in January 2016. That all
ended in the third week of the month as violence returned to its normal levels.

There were 135 security incidents reported in the press from
January 15-21, 2016. Baghdad witnessed the most violence with 65 attacks,
followed by 25 in Salahaddin, 17 in Anbar, 9 in Ninewa, 6 in Kirkuk, 5 in Babil
and Diyala each, and one in Basra, Dhi Qar, and Sulaymaniya respectively.

Those attacks led to 275 deaths and 227 injuries. 4 Hashd
al-Shaabi, 5 Peshmerga, 13 members of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), and 253
civilians were killed, and 4 Peshmerga, 30 ISF, and 193 civilians were wounded.
By province, Anbar was the deadliest with 124 fatalities. After that there were
65 in Ninewa, 59 in Baghdad, 10 in Salahaddin, 8 in Kirkuk, 5 in Babil, and 4
in Diyala.

The heaviest fighting continued to occur in Anbar where the
security forces were trying to clear the Islamic State out of the eastern
suburbs of Ramadi. The government reported more progress in that effort
declaring Albu
Khalifa, Albu Mahal, Sufiya,
and Albu
Ghanam freed. Husaiba
was also attacked during the week. In Sufiya’s case, this was the third time in
January that it was called freed of IS, yet operations were still underway
there afterward. This was also the eighth time the Iraqi forces had gone into
Husaiba since July. Ramadi appears to be emptied of IS elements, and now the
main focus is upon the suburbs to prevent the militants from re-infiltrating
into the area.

Anbar had the most reported casualties out of Iraq’s 18
provinces during the week with 124 dead and 12 wounded. That was because the
government reported that 120
civilians had been killed in the operation to free the city.

During the week there were constant reports of progress in
southern Fallujah, but with no evidence. Instead the government talked about
its operations in Thar Thar, which is to the north. That probably meant the
Fallujah campaign had stalled once again. It was begun simultaneously with the
Ramadi one in July by the Hashd, and then stopped in October. It was restarted
in December, but once again doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. As for Thar
Thar, the joint forces have carried out sweeps there on and off again for months.
IS has been able to move its men in and out of the area into neighboring
Salahaddin in response to government pressure leaving it a contested territory.

The Islamic State remained focused upon southern Baghdad.
There were 23 incidents in that section of the governorate during the week.
Three of those incidents were dead bodies being found, which could have been
the work of insurgents, vigilantes or Hashd elements. The Dora district was
also where American contractors were kidnapped. The rest of the attacks
appeared to be the work of IS such as 12 improvised explosive devices (IEDs). In
the east there were 15 incidents, but half of those could have been the work of
criminals, vigilantes or Hashd such as two robberies and various dead bodies
being dumped. Crime in fact has been on the increase in both Baghdad and
southern Iraq during the instability generated by the war. Every few days a
major robbery is reported in the capital for example. In the rest of the
governorate there were 12 incidents in the north, 11 in the west and 3 in the
center. IS is active in all the outer regions of Baghdad and the surrounding
provinces. Its networks extend all the way into the middle of the city as well.
As the group has shifted to the defensive it is concentrating upon the capital
in an attempt to stoke sectarian tension by striking Shiite areas, as well as
to undermine the public’s confidence in the government with constant bombings
and shootings. IS really picked up its operations in the capital during the
week, and there were 65 incidents total, which was the highest amount since the
third week of July 2015.

After a huge surge in violence in Diyala during the second
week of January topped off by a double IS bombing in Muqtadiya that led to
Hashd retaliatory attacks upon Sunnis, things de-escalated the following week.
There were only five incidents reported from January 15-21. Three of those
however were clashes with IS, which have not happened for quite some time in
the province. Usually attacks in Diyala are isolated shootings and IEDs with
some mortar fire sprinkled in. IS is definitely up to something in Diyala, but
what it’s goals and purposes are not known yet.

Dead bodies continued to appear throughout Kirkuk province.
8 bodies were found in four different locations during the week. The week
before one body was discovered in the governorate, 8 the first week of January,
and then 2 at the end of December. Who is responsible for these incidents is
unknown, but it is definitely a change from what was seen in Kirkuk the
previous months.

At the end of December the Islamic State launched a winter
offensive against the Kurds in Ninewa, and to a lesser extent in Kirkuk. Every
day IS hit a different part of the line looking for a week point. That ended
during the third week of January. There was only one incident in Kazar
with a mortar attack that killed five Peshmerga and wounded four others. An air
strike was blamed for killing 11 civilians and injuring 6 in Mosul on January
18. The Islamic State was also accused of executing 49 people in Mosul and
Bashiqa.

Heavy clashes continued in Salahaddin. Samarra Island in the
center and Tal Kasaiba, the Ajeel and Alas oil fields, and the Makhoul
Mountains in the northeast saw large scale skirmishes throughout the week that
included three bulldozer bombs, five suicide bombers and eight car bombs
destroyed or killed. There was also fighting in Alam just south of Tikrit. IS
launched these as counter attacks after the loss of Ramadi. IS has used
Salahaddin for months now as a diversionary front to draw attention and
manpower away from its main focus in Anbar, and that continues to the present.

The third week of January was another sign that IS’s car
bomb campaign was over. There were only 14 vehicle borne improvised explosive
devices (VBIEDs) launched during the week, the lowest amount for months. More
importantly not a single one was successful with all of them destroyed in
attacks upon the joint forces.

Iraq History Timeline

About Me

Musings On Iraq was started in 2008 to explain the political, economic, security and cultural situation in Iraq via original articles and interviews. I have written for the Jamestown Foundation, Tom Ricks’ Best Defense at Foreign Policy and the Daily Beast, and was responsible for a chapter in the book Volatile Landscape: Iraq And Its Insurgent Movements. My work has been published in Iraq via NRT, AK News, Al-Mada, Sotaliraq, All Iraq News, and Ur News all in Iraq. I was interviewed on BBC Radio 5, Radio Sputnik, CCTV and TRT World News TV, and have appeared in CNN, the Christian Science Monitor, The National, Columbia Journalism Review, Mother Jones, PBS’ Frontline, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Institute for the Study of War, Radio Free Iraq, Rudaw, and others. I have also been cited in Iraq From war To A New Authoritarianism by Toby Dodge, Imagining the Nation Nationalism, Sectarianism and Socio-Political Conflict in Iraq by Harith al-Qarawee, ISIS Inside the Army of Terror by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassahn, The Rise of the Islamic State by Patrick Cocburn, and others. If you wish to contact me personally my email is: motown67@aol.com